Welcome to Three-Minute Ed Talks, where educators from across the globe are invited to share an insight, a teaching strategy, or an invaluable lesson you learned during the rapid transition to online learning. Your challenge is to do it in just three minutes. Three-Minute Ed Talks are part of the month-long Second Wave Summit on reopening schools and universities and preparing for “the new normal.” Do you have a powerful idea for a Three-Minute Ed Talk? See how to make a submission here.
From DSC:
I remember being at a conference years ago when the Instructional Designer from a library spoke about doing “lightning rounds” with faculty members. The faculty member would record a 3-5 minute presentation about their idea/experiment and what problem they were trying to solve. They reported on whether the pedagogy worked or whether it didn’t work as planned. Great call me thinks!
Besides teachers and professors, trainers could do this with each other. So could those involved in homeschooling.
A new guide helps faculty plan equitable online courses for fall — from diverseeducation.com by Sara Weissman; guide from Every Learner Everywhere, the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) & the Association of Public & Land-grant Universities (APLU). With thanks to Ray Schroeder for the resource.
Excerpt:
A new guide for faculty, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to help professors plan their online courses for fall as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
The faculty playbook, called “Delivering High-Quality Instruction Online in Response to COVID-19,” came out of a collaboration between Every Learner Everywhere, a network of non-profits focused on student outcomes, and two of its member organizations, the Online Learning Consortium and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). Their aim is to offer equity-minded online education strategies, especially for faculty who made their first foray into online education this year.
[Dr. Karen Vignare] sees the guide as a “concise” way to bring best practices together and to offer tools for “optimized online instruction,” she said.
…
The playbook is designed so that “you can really just dive in and get what you need,” she said. “You don’t have to read the whole thing from start to finish.”
Also see:
Meet the new face of Webex Assistant — from blog.webex.com by Kacy Kizer
Excerpt:
You may be familiar with Webex Assistant, the AI-powered voice assistant for work. Now known as Webex Assistant for Webex Rooms, our original digital assistant allows you to control compatible Webex Rooms devices with your voice, making it easy to join a meeting with just a few words, manage your meetings and devices from anywhere in the room, and much more.
From DSC:
#IntelligentTutoring | #IntelligentSystems | #AI | #EmergingTechnologies | #Collaboration | #Productivity | #PersonalizedEducation
Also see:
What NOT to do when putting your classes online — from evolllution.com by
Ted Cross & Sunil Ramlall (Western Governors University)
Excerpt:
For example, a study by Ramlall & Ramlall (2016) identified the following factors in helping maximize success and satisfaction in a course.
Put yourself in the student’s shoes and walk through every aspect of the course from their perspective. Ask yourself what a student would need to know to be successful.
This unique free event is designed to give our learning community a chance to explore the most popular topics discussed at Learning Technologies.
The 2020 Learning Technologies Summer Forum (#LTSF20) takes place online, looking at some of the key topics we examined at February’s conference. Once again, the Summer event is an opportunity to interact, experiment and try some new things together.
“Many—perhaps millions—will need quick, job-focused upskilling and reskilling.”
— from The Indispensable Institution | Reimagining Community College
by Opportunity America
From DSC:
This is exactly the need that I’ve been getting at here. Many people don’t have the time — and now, the $$ — to take 4 years to get a college degree. Even 2 years is too long for many people these days. They need to be able to quickly reinvent themselves. As such, we need to tap into — and contribute to — streams of content. All. The. Time.
And do so, efficiently, safely, securely — and inexpensively!
12+ educational websites that every mechanical engineer should know — from interestingengineering.com
These are some of the best mechanical engineering websites, perfect for any student or a college graduate.
What is blockchain technology? The ultimate guide for beginners. — from cryptocoinsociety.com by Jesús Cedeño
Excerpt:
The purpose of this article is to address three central questions that should be discussed to fully understand and appreciate this revolutionary and disruptive technology called blockchain. This will include historical details about nascent technology and its evolutionary progress through the first decade of existence. We will also explore the different types of this technology and explain why the blockchain name is a misnomer and introduce a more proper name for the technology.
Why do we Need Blockchain Technology?
To answer this question we need to state what is the value proposition of Blockchain Technology. Blockchain’s value hinges on decentralization. Without decentralization blockchain technology is no different from regular databases. Decentralization removes the need to have an intermediary or a single authority that acts as gatekeepers of truth or having to trust an entity to ensure the trustworthiness of any transaction. Through blockchain, people will be able to transact with each other directly without having to worry that transactions will push through and will not be reversible.
Blockchain Can Disrupt Higher Education Today, Global Labor Market Tomorrow — from cointelegraph.com by Andrew Singer
Blockchain can play its part in the education sector — record-keeping in 2–3 years and then adoption by the labor market?
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
In the post-pandemic world, individuals will need to seize ownership and control of their educational credentials — documents like degrees and transcripts — from schools, universities and governments. That notion received key support last week from the American Council on Education in a study funded by the United States Department of Education focusing on the use of blockchain in higher education.
“Blockchain, in particular, holds promise to create more efficient, durable connections between education and work,” wrote Ted Mitchell, the president of ACE, in the foreword to the study published on June 8, adding: “In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, learners will be more mobile, moving in and out of formal education as their job, health, and family situations change.”
A key theme of the report is personal data agency — i.e., how “distributed ledger technologies [DLT] can ‘democratize’ data and empower individuals with agency over their personal information.”
Blockchain has been described as a hammer in search of a nail. If so, academic credentialing appears to be as obvious a nail as one can find. The current international trade in fake academic degrees, after all, is “staggering,” as the BBC reported, and with a global labor market increasingly mobile, the world could badly use a decentralized, borderless, tamper-free ledger of verifiable credentials — both for education and the broader labor market.
From DSC:
Here’s an idea that I’ve been thinking about for quite some time now. It’s not necessarily a new idea, but the seed got planted in me by a former colleague, Quin Schultze (which I blogged about in January of 2018). I’m calling it, “My Learning Journal.” The purpose of this device is to promote your metacognition — helping you put things into your own words and helping you identify your knowledge gaps.
I realize that such a learning strategy/tool could take some time to complete. But it could pay off — big time! Give it a try for a few weeks and see what you think.
And, with a shout-out to Mr. James McGrath, the President of the WMU-Cooley Law School, the article listed below explains the benefits of taking the time for such reflection:
Reflective learning – reflection as a strategic study technique — from open.edu
Excerpts:
Rather than thinking of reflection as yet another task to be added to your ‘to do’ list or squeezed into a busy study schedule, view it as something to practice at any stage. The emphasis is on being a reflective learner rather than doing reflective learning.
Developing a habit of reflective learning will help you to:
From DSC:
Pastors, trainers, K-12 educators, student teachers, coaches, musical teachers, and others: Perhaps a slightly modified version of this tool might be beneficial to those with whom you work as well…?
And for educators and trainers, perhaps we should use such a tool to think about our own teaching and training methods — and what we are (or aren’t) learning ourselves.
Addendum on 5/14/20:
Perhaps someone will build a bot for this type of thing, which prompts us to reflect upon these things. Here are some examples of what I’m talking about or something like Woebot, which Jeremy Caplan mentioned here.
Potentially-useful sites for developing writers out there:
